BLNAH: Now Predicting the Future with Bad Puns

I told Sri Lanka to be Afridi, but apparently they decided not to listen, and Pakistan (if they could put the guns straight up into the air in celebration instead of at each other, I'm sure the ICC would appreciate it) are your 2009 ICC World Twenty20 Champions. I would tell you the man of the match, but you should already know by now, but in case you don't here's the title of the Cricinfo article:

"Afridi fifty seals title for Pakistan"

So go crazy folks, Afghanistan and Pakistan have one the last two international cricket tournaments, up next, we clearly need an Iraq-North Korea final.

Wow...just...wow..

I didn't get to see the end, I had to leave for work early. The whole time I was at work, I was convinced they lost, I was writing a post in my head about how impressed I was, how except for Chris Gayle, this wasn't the team I'd been following with great disappointment since February, that they proved themselves out there, and they certainly weren't going to be #11 when they went home next year. I was ready to complain about how I hate the Duckworth-Lewis Method. Only I got it all wrong.

I wasn't alive in 1980 (I'm only 23 after all) I always thought it was exciting when Al Michaels yelled about believing in miracles, but it had never happened in real time, I've never even seen that game in real time, even on a replay. But out there today two of the Windies classiest acts Chanderpaul and Sarwan got the job done. Most people have a number they will never forget, and will always bring them smiles: 61, 14-14, Dywane Bravo will probably enjoy that 66* for a long time, but for me, I will never forget one simple pair of numbers 19* and 17*

It's too bad Brian Lara wasn't there, he probably would have been looking for someone to hug.


*this isn't actually a footnote, in Cricket if there is a star next to the run total it means they are not or were not out.

Maybe this blog should really be called...

Brian Lara Needs Some Time Away From England. Because goodness gracious, we're gonna do it again people! England beats India today 153-150, knocking them out of contention (they still have a match against South Africa, but it's meaningless at 0-2), leaving the match between the West Indies and England (the 19th meeting of any type between the two since February) as a elimination match. Do the West Indies have what it takes to get show that the upset over the defending champs wasn't a fluke? Can England recover from their own thrilling victory over India? Will Chris Gayle take off his funneral shroud and play some cricket? Will anyone watch the irrelivent Sri Lanka-Ireland undercard (as Ireland is also eliminated from competition)? All these answers and more will be revealed by the end of the day tomorrow, if you can find it, enjoy it, it's gonna be a great match.

Number One Stunnas

Image via AP

(#11) West Indies 156/3 (#1) India 153/7

That with Chris Gayle being held to 22 runs off of 28 balls (a terrible rate for one of the world's best players).

That being mostly the same West Indies team that is coming off an embarassing performace against England, in both Test and ODI's.

That team being ranked next to last for the 12 teams in the tournament, and have come flying out of the gates ever since.

I won't lie, I don't know when the new ICC rankings come out again, but I can tell you one thing, they won't see the West Indies in 11th place, even if they did lose to South Africa just before I started to write this.

Dwayne Bravo was the star of the show going for 66 runs (anything above 50 is a pretty good effort for 20 overs) as well as bowling four of India's seven wickets.

That's right Fidel Edwards, Number One Stunners

Alright I'll say it, I'm a bad blogger, it's been exactly three weeks since my last post, and here we are in the middle of the international tournament of the year (since we're in a down year for the ODI tournaments) the ICC World Twenty20 Championship (..of the World). I want to mix things up a little, so lets try this in FAQ form.


Q: Who qualified for the tournament?
A: The top ten teams in the ICC's world rankings, plus the top two finishers from the Qualifying Tournament. However, because it is a corrupt political entity, Zimbabwae was forced out of the tournament. and was replaced by the third place finisher in the Qualifying Tournament. This is how they're ranked.

1) India
2) Pakistan
3) Austrailia
4) New Zealand
5) South Africa
6) Sri Lanka
7) England
8) Bangladesh
9) Ireland
10) Netherlands
11) West Indies
12) Scotland

Q: Wait, 12 teams, how do you set up a single elimination tournament that way?
A: You don't. Instead, they have four pool groups each consisting of one first tier, one second tier, and one third tier team. You go by ranking. So you get four groups that look like this:

1-8-9
2-7-10
3-6-11
4-5-12

Q: What have we missed so far?
A: So far you've missed the pool play I just mentioned.

Q: Any Suprises?
A: Austrailia went quietly into the night losing to the West Indies 172-169 (in a match where WI only sent 5 batsmen to the stumps), and losing to Sri Lanka 160-159 (this time only 6 Batsmen for SL). The Netherlands were elimnated in heartbreaking fashion when they were only able to put up 93 runs against Pakistan to allow England to move on to the Super Eight.

(and let it be stated here that I am glad for Bloggers autosave feature that allowed this to still be here when my computer shut down on me)

Q: Super Eight? What's that?
A: The Super Eight is the second round of the competition and it started today (South Africa 114-England 111, and New Zealand 198-Ireland 115 for those keeping track at home) It is two groups of four (the first and second place finishers from the four opening round pools. Each plays the other three in the pool, and the top two from each pool move onto the semi-finals.

Q: Anything else we should know?
A: If you want to learn about cricket, 20/20 is probably the best way to do it, it's the shortest game, has the fasting pacing, and is the only version of the sport played at night. If you've gotten into the sport at all through this, first off that's nice, cause hey, I've accomplished something. Second, you might want to take the next step up, and learn about Net Run Rate, which is the first tie-breaking tool, and will save you a lot of confusion (if you're good at math). Finally, enjoy the games! They're in England, so you can have cricket with your breakfast (Game one Tomorrow starts at 6:30 EDT, and Game two starts at 7:30 PDT, so there are options for everyone.)

Allen Stanford Faces Fraud Charges: BLNAH Wonders How Stupid He Could Be

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090220/ts_nm/us_stanford_41

Not that you know who Allen Stanford is. I won't lie, it was supposed to be part of a suprise, the Stanford 20/20 is my favorite tournament, in fact, it's the tournament that introduced me to cricket in the first place. Now with these charges leveled against him by the SEC, plus other issues that arose from the Super Series, it all comes to question wether or not we've seen the last of the Stanford 20/20, and what it means for West Indian Cricket as a whole. Personally I find myself very disappointed by all the developments, I had to read the first story I found mentioning it in the paper twice before it sunk in. I still find myself in a "Say it ain't so Joe" way of thinking, I'd like to hope the best, because really, I think Allen Stanford was the best chance we'll see in a while to have Cricket come through in America

For a look at the shooting star story of Allen Stanford, I'd recomend this story here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090220/ts_afp/cricketwisengusfinancefraudstanford_20090220100551

The End of the Year, at the Beginning of the Year.

I promised you a year in review between Christmas and New Years, but got busy/sick, so there is no review until now. Clearly the country of the Year has to be Austrailia. They finished 2008 at the top of the ICC rankings for both Tests, and ODIs. There were a lot of exciting tournaments this year, including the Stanford 20/20 (which got me into Cricket in the first place) the Asian Cup for 20/20, Qualifying for the ICC 20/20 Tournament in 2010 (which saw both America and Canada move on) There have also been plenty of quality matches, including the New Zealand-West Indies Test series, the England-India test series to get over the Mumbai attacks. All in all, 2008 was a semi-exciting year for Cricket (the falling apart of Zimbabwae excluded) and we should look foward to many bright things in the future.

Okay okay, so it took a couple of days (and a campy coming of age movie, and an ongoing snowstorm) but I'm back on my feet, so we're ready to dive back into this.

Last Weekend New Zealand and the West Indies got washed out enough that they ended in a tie. This week is whole different story, as apparently Chanderpaul has lit his bat on fire and is simply dominiating the competition and going for 400 RUNS He's sitting off the stumps on 100, as WI is currently 258/6 after 91 overs. To top it off, they are still in their first innings, so it looks like the rout is on, and New Zealand learned nothing from the beat down they took at the hands of Austrailia three weeks ago..

In India, India is on their 1st innings as well, after 72 overs and the end of day one they're going at 179/1, but it is an incredibly slow 179, as the batsmen have combined to see 400 bowls between them, which I'm sure is making for miserable spectating.

Austrailia is picking up right where it left off three weeks ago with New Zealand, only this weekend's whipping boy is South Africa. Austrailia currently has a 322 run lead, and has 3 wickets in hand still in the Second innings, so it's probably all over but the crying for that one.

All of these matches will carry on into the weekend, and after that, it will pretty much wrap things up for the year (next weekend will see the second Test for Austrailia-South Africa, and the start of a Bangladesh-Sri Lanka series, and if you've gotten bored with your toys, you can spend a few hours on the 26th with New Zealand and the West Indies again as they play a 20/20 to wrap up there year) Hopefully we'll have a year in review (that we weren't in exsistance for most of) up sometime between Christmas and the New Year.

What to Watch/Read/Ask Me About This Weekend

Well jeaz, this certainly kind of got off the cricket track for a while, so let's see if we can't get things back into gear by telling you what's going on in the circket world this weekend which is: One match. On Sunday (Saturday Evening our time) Tasmania will be playing New South Wales at Hobart in the Ford Ranger cup (the follow up match is a day night match, so I would guess they're playing 20/20) (nope actually looked it up and it turns out it's an ODI Tournament, so there you go) Also if you have a DSL connection or faster that is liked by the site you can go on ESPN360 to watch either this years Asia Cup, or the Stanford 20/20 for $10,000,000 tournament. Other than that, have a good weekend.

Test Cricket and ODI's

Since this site doubles as an explanation to the sport to people who have never even seen it before, it seems as though a proper explanation of the two types of cricket I have failed to mention so far goes in here.

ODI is short for One Day Interational, and is the most common version played on an international level. Unlike 20/20 which is one innings (yes the singular is plural, I've never tried to understand it either) with 20 overs (estinally overs are the baseball equivilent to an inning) ODI's have 2 innings usually 40 or 50 overs depending on the agreement between the two sides. From there, there's a coin filp (as there is in all forms of cricket) and winner decides to bat or bowl first. From there, it's standard cricket (which is complicated enough that it will probably get it's own post at some point).

Test Cricket, is simply put, what's killed any chance at all of cricket being a major sport in the west (with a notable exception I will cover next time). Test Cricket is the top level of Cricket in the world, unforuntately, one Test Cricket match can take up to 5 days to play. They only play during the day (20/20 is the only cricket that's played at night) and they stop in the middle of whatever they are doing once the sun goes down. It's required both teams wear entirely white during a test match, and since it istop level cricket, you actually need to show that you're able to play it, by winning your way up to the right, and being approved as a full member of the International Cricket Council of which there are currently only 10 members: England, Austrailia, New Zealand, The West Indies, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Zimbabwae. (for those who are curious the United States and Canada are associate members, and can only play ODI's if they reach World Cricket League Division 1, but for which Canada has an exception to play until next year).

The major problem with test cricket is it's never ever going to translate for tv, they play for 8 hours at a time, with one 30 minute tea break during the match, and an hour lunch break. How would you take any commerical breaks for a show that almost never stops?

South Africa V Bangladesh

Well speak of the devil, I pointed out the exsistance of 20/20 Circket and it turns out there was a 20/20 match today between South Africa and Bangladesh (much like during the Olympics the best Cricket sides happen to be in time zones earlier than ours, so most major contests are done before we've even had lunch) and it also gives us the chance to look at one of the quirky aspects of cricket.

Like baseball, Circket has to stop for rain (since it's played on a glorified bocce court in most cases) unlike baseball, they won't make us wait 3 days before we can dertermine the winner, cricket has a method called the Duckworth-Lewis Method (D/L Method for short) in which if the game is interrupted for weather, a mathematical formula is used to determine how the team would have done if played under normal conditions in todays SA-Bangladesh match, the match was hampered by rain, and so the D/L Method was brought in to the final total. South Africa socred 118 runs in 20 overs in which they were assumed runs on three occsions due to the rain. Because of this, despite the 9 run difference, the final score states that South Africa won by 14 runs, because in ideal conditions, they would have scored more.

(final scores are determined by whether the winning team batted or bowled (pitched) first, if you bat first and win, you win by the difference in runs, if you bat second and win, you are said to have won by the number of wickets (outs) you had remaining)

This is all a very long way of saying South Africa 118 Bangladesh 109, and congrats to Abdur Razzak of Bangladesh as player of the match.